


On Your Six

by Vamp



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Attempt at Humor, BAMF Peggy Carter, Banter, Bucky Barnes & Peggy Carter Friendship, Chases, Dick Jokes, F/M, Flirting, Forests, Friends to Lovers, Fugitives, Lipstick & Lip Gloss, Mutual Pining, On the Run, POV Peggy Carter, Pining, Present Tense, Romantic Friendship, SHIELD, SHIELD Agent Bucky Barnes, Scrabble, Sexual Tension, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 02:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13730868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vamp/pseuds/Vamp
Summary: As her own pulse echoes deafeningly between her ears Peggy affords herself a moment of self-praise.Leaving the high heels behind this morning was an excellent choice.





	On Your Six

**Author's Note:**

> Hugs, love, and glitter to my very bestest friend and beta Vermeil. She keeps me on track every time I go off the rails. She always knows just what to suggest to get me back on course and motivated. I'd be a tragic mess without her support and this fic would never have gotten posted. <3

She can hear him closing in behind her over the sound of branches snapping under her heeled boots. The crinkling and crackling of withered foliage grates on her nerves as she races through the woods of Montana. As her own pulse echoes deafeningly between her ears she affords herself a moment of self-praise. 

Leaving the high heels behind this morning was an excellent choice. 

The hem of her olive green dress catches on a thorny bush and she grunts in annoyance. With a tear, the bush snaps free of the garment and she’s off again. She’s trying to ignore the sting of cuts and scrapes on her legs. Pants would’ve been such a better choice, but there’s only so much one can be expected to recall when on the run. She does add the torn fabric to the list of regrets she has for the day. Admittedly, it’s relatively low priority in comparison to her own general negligence at this point.

Peggy Carter, former Director of SHIELD, can hardly believe that this is how it is going to end. 

They’re deep within the wilderness now, the sounds of the highway she sprinted from are nothing more than a vague memory. If there are sirens in the distance she can’t hear them. She’s listening for the steady thrum of helicopter blades, but instead only hears labored breathing. This is how it’s going to end and it hurts knowing that she’s yet to gain enough intel to prove her case. Even if she tries to explain, she can’t count on him to believe her. 

What a funny thought. She never believed that she’d live to see a day when she couldn’t count on James Buchanan Barnes. 

He’s going to catch his fugitive and she suspects he’ll be rewarded with high praise. If it wasn’t for their opposing roles, she’d dare to be proud of him. James chased her first across the city, then the state, and now the the country. Though that doesn’t mean that she plans on making this easy for him. 

She never underestimated him, only hoped that she could stay one step ahead. 

Giving up now would be an insult to both of them.

The Sergeant of the Howling Commandos is close enough that Peggy hears him curse creatively as she leaps over a downed tree. He’s too close and moving too quickly to change his course without losing ground. He has no choice other than to do the same as she did, take a poorly timed leap over the treacherous natural debris. 

She can’t risk looking behind herself so she doesn't, but she knows that he stumbles. James has never been graceful on anything that wasn’t pavement or a dance floor. The latter is a bittersweet thought.

Memories like that are what inspired her to take matters into her own hands in the first place. She’s questioned the path that she’s taken a hundred times, but never has she questioned whether or not it was worth the risk. Laying all that she had learned out on a table for the first time had left little room for doubt. Peggy had asked the dingy damp walls of a non-descript motel just outside of Queens a question at the start of it all. What would the greatest tactician in American history have said after taking in all the evidence? What would he have done to save… everything?

Not for the first time Peggy wishes that Steve Rogers was here. If only to help explain things to the bat out of hell behind her. God only knows what story has been handcrafted and painstakingly delivered to James by now. He’s far from gullible, but she knows first hand just how convincing those turncoat bastards can be. 

Having Steve deliver the news would have never worked though. He would have thrown caution to the wind and moved heaven and Earth for a chance to punch his way through this mess. It's what he did when he was protecting something that was precious to him. Peggy was no different. She just had a bit more patience. She thinks now that she understands Steve more than ever and in ways she couldn’t have imagined when he was alive. Time’s a funny thing that way. 

But Steve is long since dead and James is about to become her captor. Had there been a coin toss ten years ago to predict where she'd be in life it likely would have landed on its edge. 

Peggy has come too far to turn back now. So she doesn't. She keeps putting one foot in front of the other. Hurling her body forward as she dashes through the tree trunks, climbing higher, and higher through Montana’s Lolo National Forest. She slips and nearly loses her footing to a batch of wet pine needles and loose stones but regains her stride and keeps running. 

She hasn’t done everything that she set out to do, but she can go to prison knowing that she damn well tried. She hopes that the minimal data she has will be enough for James to take action with. Assuming that he believes her at all. The details she has aren’t ironclad, but it may be enough to keep him safe and save whatever’s left of SHIELD after the fallout. Maybe someday he can forgive her for cutting him out. 

Two years of running. It’s almost over and Peggy’s shamefully unsure if she’s done enough to make a difference. 

She sees a stream up ahead and misjudges the distance, jumping far too early. She thinks she’ll get passed the muddy banks on either side, but she’s wrong. Dead wrong. Her right boot sinks into the mucky earth and she lets out a growl of frustration as she jerks her leg free. 

Time’s up. 

James crashes into her back at top speed and down they fall. She sputters a cough as the air leaves her lungs on impact. Into the mud she goes and they land somewhere in the underbrush at the water’s edge. She really thought that she had cleared the gap with room to spare but her lack of sleep these past few weeks must have clouded her judgement. Dead leaves and pine needles stick to her face and get caught in the sweat dampened hair on her forehead. She already feels mud soaking into her clothes and coating her knees. This is a rather undignified end.

James grunts and she takes a small comfort in knowing that he’s suffering somewhat. She rises up to her knees and sees a flash of dark mussed hair and a stubbled cheek. The veil that her own hair has made over her face prevents her from taking in much more. 

She tries to orient herself quickly. It's no use, she’s shoved down just as she pushes the hair from her eyes. Peggy yelps by way of protest and they grapple each other for better positioning. She has the speed and he has the strength, but they’re struggling lacks any form of coordination. 

It seems that years of hand to hand combat training has been completely forgotten after a brisk jaunt through nature. Peggy would laugh at the insight if she didn't desperately require the oxygen that it would take to do so. 

Her scrambling leaves her foot stuck, once again, in the same damned hole she had made freeing herself not seconds ago. James uses this to his advantage and angles his body above and over hers. His arms slide around her waist quickly and she doesn’t even have the leverage to do anything about it. She pushes against him, but he shifts and wrenches one of her arms up high on her spine. 

Peggy stops struggling. She doesn’t very well have any other choice. 

His chest is pressed tightly against her side. He has one of his arms secure around her torso and the other still has her wrist pinned up and between her shoulder blades. His breath is hot against her cheek and he smartly uses his muscular frame to keep her on the ground. 

She turns her head and looks over her shoulder as best she can to see him. Even with the bruising underneath, his eyes are the same startlingly blue that they’ve always been. The sweat along his brow, the dimple of his chin, and the bits and bobs from the forest caught in his hair would have amused her in the past. It was quite the sight to see him looking so rumpled. 

Instead, as Peggy Carter faces James Barnes for the first time in a year she feels a tragic mixture of relief and sadness. She’s only seen him from a distance since she’s been on the lam. Though there were a few exceptions that she is none too proud of.

 

She recalls a time just a few months ago where she followed him into a bar. James had no idea that she had been there, in the darkest, furthest corner of the room. Oversized clothes and a wig did wonders to ensure that Peggy had warranted no second glances. She knew full well that there could be defectors near, but she just needed to see that he was alright. 

Elbows on the bartop, shoulders hunched, and head hung low. James wasn’t alright by any stretch.

Truly, the man needed a hug, but Peggy couldn’t very well give him that comfort. Blending in with the crowd bustling for drinks around him, she pickpocketed his phone. In the ladies room she pulled off the wig and snapped a photo with it. Quickly, the image of herself blowing a kiss was set as the background. On her way out she dropped the phone and kicked it underneath his stool. Peggy heard someone say, “Excuse me, I think you dropped this?”, just as she was leaving the building.

She didn’t think until almost fifty miles south of that bar that maybe James wouldn’t welcome her comfort anymore. Even in the upside down cat and mouse world that they had fallen into, she’d never stopped seeing him as a friend. Peggy had had no way of knowing if that feeling was mutual any longer given where their chips had fallen. It was a reality that stung for the one hundred miles that followed. 

Looking at him now, even at this odd angle, was enough to make her stomach flip and heart wonder. What could things have been in a world where they were fighting for the same cause? Could she have looked at James and seen more than bewilderment and hurt? 

“Oh,” Peggy huffs a piece of hair out of her face, “I see you decided to do some work for a change. Special occasion or did you just miss me?" She squirms against him, bucking her hips to shove him off of her. 

“What's a guy supposed to think, Peggs?,” James uses his broad chest to keep her on the forest floor as he digs through his pocket with a newly free hand. “You don't call,” his nose brushes against the shell of her ear as he shifts away. “You don't write,” he’s still panting for air as he pushes off of her. 

“That's hardly true, Bucky. You just stopped returning my messages.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Why, too intimate? Would you prefer I call you by your title?” Peggy’s voice waivers and she tries for condescending in an effort to keep up appearances. He yanks her crushed arm from underneath her stomach and deftly places a plastic zip tie around her wrists. “Besides, I left you a note not two months ago when I passed through your neighborhood, James.”

He laughs, breathy and bright. Briefly his knees bracket her hips. A light hand lands at the base of her spine as he gets his balance. He leans backwards to catch his breath now that she's subdued. 

“You broke into my house and set up your note with a game of Scrabble. I still can't find the other D tiles by the way, I'm adding that onto your rap sheet, Carter.”

“What a shame. I couldn't either. I just assumed you'd give me the D later.” He lets out a snort that becomes a laugh and it bellows across the landscape. 

The circumstance of their encounter is foreign, but the verbal sparring feels like a homecoming.

It’s too painful and too comforting to fall into this again with him so easily. She’s setting herself up for failure by even acknowledging that. The calvary is sure to be here soon to put her in proper handcuffs and take her to a locked cell. A cell where she’ll have very little else to do aside from replay all the moments leading up to this. 

Who knows what kind of misinformation he’s been fed since she’s been gone. What kind of opinion must he have of her?

Objectively, Peggy knows that this was her own doing. She could’ve avoided him completely instead of taking needless risks to check in on him. 

She should have taken off and never spared a glance in her rearview mirror. This man and proximity had always been a troublesome combination for her. Perhaps it was just the man in general that was trouble really. 

She catches the edge of a smile on his face when she shifts to head off the crick in her neck. Reluctantly she admits that she’s hopelessly invested and wouldn’t have changed a bloody thing if it meant staying away. If even a portion of what she has uncovered ends up being true then her mother henning was hardly out of place.

Peggy clears her throat, forcing the unhelpful thoughts out of her mind. “I was rather fond of my Scrabble message I’ll have you know. I thought it was quite clever. Tell me,” realizing how quiet the forest has become, she keeps her voice low, “what did it say again?” 

She hears him let out a long exhale through his nose. Only the birds squawking above fills the air. Maybe he’s unwilling to break the calm of the world now that they are done crashing through it. Peggy refuses to believe that she’s the only one with confused emotions right now. 

The leaves disturb the peace as James carefully pulls her to her feet. One strong arm loops into the crook of her elbow. Peggy’s legs are shaky, the foot that she still has stuck in the mud not doing her balance any favors. He bends and places a warm hand against her bare calf, sliding down to the top of her boot and helping to pull her free. She shivers and has no doubts that James can feel the gooseflesh of her leg under his calloused palm. 

He bites the inside of his cheek as he rights himself to stand beside her. Even with the obvious markers of fatigue on his face and smatterings of mud all along his left side, James is still Hollywood handsome. They start walking slowly in the direction where she guesses civilization is. His hand is gentle on her elbow, only gripping when she wavers on her feet across the hilly terrain. 

“The tiles spelled out, ‘Get well soon don’t die on me’. The NyQuil on my nightstand was a sweet touch. Not sure how you managed to get in while I was asleep, but I guess a fever of a hundred and three will do that to a man. How did you get in by the way?” 

“A lady never tells.”

“Isn’t it, ‘a lady never kisses and tells’?”

“Well we’ve never kissed so there’s not much else to tell.”

“Oh believe me, I know full well that we’ve never kissed,” he chuckles, but the barb still stings. The air feels far too thin and Peggy blames the elevation of the mountains for the pain in her chest. 

She had three locations left to check for intel in this God forsaken state. Then her two week long stay would have come to an end. She just had to have chosen the most remote of them to investigate on today of all days. 

Maybe he was following her. Maybe he got lucky. As the silence stretches on between them she thinks that maybe it doesn’t matter anyway.

Peggy says the first thing she can think of because the quiet makes her nauseous. “I'm sure your colleagues had a laugh sweeping that particular crime scene. I hope the case file was titled something clever like the ‘Goodwill Gangster’.” There’s a bitterness in her tone, remembering that his colleagues were once hers. His hand tenses on her arm. It’s subtle, but strong enough to spark her interest. His guard must be down because that’s a tell that he’s far too experienced to let slip. She stops and turns quickly. It leaves them chest to chest when he walks into her because of the short stop. 

She angles her head up to watch his face. It doesn’t give much away, but Peggy’s just as trained at reading body language as James is at hiding those same cues. “You never called it in,” she states it as the fact it is. A muscle in his jaw ticks and not for the first time she’s struck by how badly she wants to run her teeth across it. It’s a compulsion that she’s fought against for years and never bothered to address. James looks at a point beyond her shoulder, but he doesn’t deny her accusation.

His hand loosens on her arm, but he doesn’t step away and neither does she. James looks up to the treeline above them and squints as rays of sunshine fall across his face. He sighs and breathes deep before looking down at Peggy. His browline scrunches in the middle, like he’s thinking too hard and Peggy’s sure that she’s mirroring the look. 

Why wouldn’t he call SHIELD? Peggy had been homesick and lonely when she visited his apartment. She knew, even at the time, that she was acting recklessly to sneak in while he was there. Even though he was too ill to be a threat. To think that SHIELD’s most wanted criminal went through his board games while he was home and incapacitated… and he did nothing to alert them to the event was baffling. 

It’s a question of loyalty that only leads to more questions. The possibilities swirl in her head like a cyclone and a number of things click into place. 

Over thirty minutes in the woods and no sirens, helicopters, or barking dogs can be found. James is alone, he’s pursued her on foot, and he has no back-up. If he had called for additional agents at the start she knows for a fact that they would have been on top of the tracker in his phone within fifteen minutes. Which means that they would have arrived by now. Which means that he never called them at all. 

James didn't shoot her, not even with a non-lethal weapon. He hadn't used real handcuffs on her. He wasn’t treating her like a traitor. He hadn't called in support agents two months ago. More importantly, he hadn't called in support agents today.

The discoveries make Peggy feel brave and impulsive; it’s a disastrous duo that James has no idea he inspires in her. With her hands literally and metaphorically tied she has nothing to lose. 

Peggy stands on the tips of her boots and leans up and into his towering form. She doesn’t know if his head tips down to meet her or if he’s just trying to steady them on the uneven landscape. One of James’ hands lands on her hip and the other rises to the nape of her neck. 

They waste no time to consider or reconsider any implications or consequences. For all the flaws surrounding this moment, the ghosts of the past seem to slip away. A few seconds of calm before reality rushes up to meet them. 

James’ lips are sinfully soft and Peggy’s tongue is persistent. His lip catches between her teeth, an uncoordinated effort on her part to get closer. This would be so much simpler if only her hands were free. She wants to apologize when she tastes the faintest hint of copper, though she can’t say who is truly to blame for it. She opens her mouth to speak and swallows his moan instead. He’s probably already forgiven her anyways. 

He has a fist full of her hair and he tugs it firmly to the side, the motion makes her sway on her feet. James is dropping quick kisses along Peggy’s neck and all she can do is trust that he'll keep her from falling. The imbalance is a small price to pay for the pleasure. Trusting him now is as easy as it’s ever been.

He’s resting his forehead against hers all too soon and her eyelids are fluttering closed before the spell can be broken. Just another minute, she thinks this may have to last them a while. Leave it to them to figure themselves out at the most inopportune time imaginable. 

James clears his throat and breaks first, “Peggs?”.

“Hm?”

“Where’s your handy dandy light’s out lipstick?” The question is a low rumble that Peggy can feel more than hear. His arms have moved to encircle her, but he’s not unbinding her. She’s confused, but too intrigued and flushed to be upset.

“I have a Widow’s Kiss tube in my right boot. Why?”

“In your boot?” He scoffs and shakes his head. “Hell of a place for it.”

“Yes, in my boot. How naive of you to assume that my dress has pockets.” She stands tall and arches an eyebrow. James withdraws from her and steadies Peggy as she lifts her foot. “There’s a small button in the back of the heel,” she instructs, “hold it for three seconds.” He does as he’s told and the tube of lipstick pops out. Once he removes it the small compartment clicks closed and she rests her foot carefully on the ground. 

Uncapping the stick, James twists it until the shock of bright red is revealed. “May I?” he asks as he brings one hand up to steady her face. 

She rolls her eyes, but nods and leans into the touch. “I can’t bloody well do it myself now can I?”

She has a general idea of what he may be planning, but she doesn’t know for sure so for now she just has to hope for some kind of happy ending.

Her lips fall open into a relaxed pout. Their gazes meet and Peggy doesn't miss the way his Adam's apple bobs. His teeth drag across the pink of his swollen bottom lip as he focuses all his attention to the task. He slowly drags the matte red finish across her lips, taking great pains to follow the shape of her mouth without getting the potent makeup somewhere that’d be harmful to her. 

If his smile is anything to go by, she think that he's satisfied with his work. He caps the tube and tosses it in the general direction of another smaller water way. They both watch it for a moment as it travels downstream. 

Peggy smacks her lips a few times with care. “You’re frighteningly good at applying that stuff, James. Anything you’d like to tell me?” she teases. It earns her a wink and a smirk. She’ll take it. 

“Yeah,” he says, “I have two sisters.”

His hand falls away from her face. She waits for James to give an explanation, but he only keeps looking her over. Peggy wonders what she must look like to him now. Sweaty and muddied with a tattered dress and ruby painted lips. She wonders what she may have looked like to him before all this. She wants to ask, but it just reminds her of how much she had to give up and why.

“SHIELD isn't what you think it is, James.” She blurts the understatement of the century out and hopes for the best.

“I know. That's why I assigned myself as the head agent on your case. I don't know what you know and to keep you safe for a bit longer we need to keep it that way. I’m sorry that all this has happened, but I know you’re being used as a scapegoat. You’re not alone, Peggs. You never have been. I have a part to play and I couldn’t...” 

Well that’s unexpected. Peggy thinks he’s at a loss for words because he takes a breath to finish his sentence, but the words don’t come for awhile.

“Listen,” James continues, “I’m real fuzzy on the details. But I know that whatever is going on, you and I are somehow at the center of it. I’m assuming you got more on that than I do right now, but I can’t know anything. They gotta believe that I’m blissfully under thumb otherwise we lose the advantage.”

James is still at risk, but he knows to be on his guard. He knows that something is wrong in SHIELD and he believes in her, and her innocence. Things are suddenly looking to be much brighter than they were at the start of their foot race. 

“Have you been protecting me from inside this whole time?” At the onset Peggy had known that purging the poison she uncovered within SHIELD was going to be hard. She just always assumed that she'd be able to resolve it before things got out of hand. The enemy was well established behind their defenses long before she even knew they were there. 

“You didn’t need much help. All I did was make sure that if anyone got close to you it was me. Always did tell you that I had your back, just wished you would have believed me. Or come to me first… You could've told me,” James wags two fingers in front of her face, “I’ve been chasing you for two years Peggs, and the only thing I ever wanted to say was that you should’ve told me.”

This wasn’t the time to make excuses, and even if it was, Peggy didn’t have any. She had wanted to tell James, truly. The only thing that would’ve accomplished would’ve been that he was dragged down with her. Which is precisely why she didn’t say a thing. 

“What would you have done, Director Barnes? It was better this way. Besides, I needed the good parts of SHIELD to be in hands I could trust. With you being the next in line after me, I knew the corruption wouldn't make it to the top. I'm sure you have more than a reprimand for me after all this time.”

“I do. I have plenty for you. It’ll have to wait until later though.” His cockiness is infuriating if only because of how charming it is. 

She sighs and makes a show of trying to twist and pull out of the zip tied cuffs at her back. “Later when? In my cell or when I'm on trial? Perhaps I should pencil you in for the morning of my sentence hearing.” 

James reaches up and sharply pulls on a loose bit of her hair. “Don’t be a brat,” he chides. It stops her ire before it can start. James gives her an indulgent look, like he’s humoring her foolishness. It annoys her so completely that she nearly feels bad for all the times she’s done the same to him. 

“You know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“I’d cross myself if I had my hands free.”

He shakes his head and ignores her verbal jab, “I think I'm going to retire early. Probably within the next two months.”

“Any reason why?”

“Burnout and PTSD must have taken their toll. War time, all that.” James starts counting down reasons on his fingers, “Losing my best friend to a plane crash during a mission I should’ve been on. Losing my other best friend, my partner, to a life of crime.” James winks, “Narrowly catching her after years of pursuit, only to fail. Take your pick.”

Peggy sees where this is going. “When you put it like that I can say that no one will blame you for needing the time off.”

James runs his hands through his hair, tousling it to the point that a cloud of dirt creates a halo in the early evening light. “That’s what I’m thinking. I'll send some highly classified documents to a safety deposit box in Mexico my final week at SHIELD.”

“My, that’s dreadfully risky don’t you think Director? It’ll be an absolute shame if they leaked to the media some time after your resignation.” Peggy blinks owlishly, face turned up in a mock expression of horror.

James nods and she doesn’t miss the playful twinkle in his eye. “Good thing that the address, number of the box, and keys are safely in the top drawer of my nightstand under a bottle of NyQuil. Not like anyone else has that kind of access to my home, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll have to get a new duffle bag for my trip. My old one is shoved under my bed. It's full of passports, women’s clothing, and a variety of currencies. I can’t be bothered to unpack it.”   
She grins and flips her head to get the frizzy bits of loose hair out of her eyes. “How lazy of you to drop the ball like that.”

“Ha! It gets worse. I won’t even be home tonight until well past two in the morning. I'm sure I’ll get restless after a week of retirement and take a long and well deserved vacation to the surprise of no one. I'm thinking Galway Bay in Ireland.” 

“Hm. It should be lovely by that time of year there. It’d be a shame to miss it.”

“You should go sometime. You know, when you’re not tied up.” 

“Har, har.” Peggy can’t imagine the amount of trouble that sass has gotten him into over the years. 

“Coincidentally, there's a flyer for the hotel I'll be staying at under that same bottle of NyQuil. Not that anyone will care, but I’m booking a single suite there. Think I'll treat myself to a king sized bed. I plan to have it all to myself of course.” 

“But of course…Well,” she lets out a long suffering sigh, “I suppose we’ll have some things to discuss later after all.”

He swipes at the now dried mud caked to the side of his pants. “We do have quite the list of things to get through. It may take awhile. All night even. Probably longer.” 

Peggy’s cheeks flush at the innuendo, but she side steps it neatly. “I don’t see that being a problem - for me. Do you plan on untying me?”

James shakes his head, “We have to make this look like you got the upperhand if it's going to work, doll.”

“Or we could avoid the theatrics and you could just untie me.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“I find your definition of fun rather troubling. But fine. We’ll do it your way.” Arms still bound behind her, Peggy steps into his space so that they’re toe to toe. Knowing that the next time they see one another she won’t be wearing orange is doing wonders for her confidence. Looking straight ahead puts her at eye level to his Adam’s apple. It dips and bobs and she knows that she has his attention. 

James plucks leaves from her hair so she drops her head under the guise of making his job easier. Peggy takes a deep, steadying breath, mouth parted into a pout as she looks up to him under long lashes. It has the desired effect when his features soften and he tilts her chin up with a fingertip. He can’t seem to decide whether to focus on her eyes or her lips. 

Lips laced with a mild sedative, this is oddly far more intimate than the kiss they shared moments before. She almost regrets being the one to ruin it. Just as their lips are about to touch, Peggy raises a knee swiftly and catches him between the legs. 

James crumbles and falls to one knee in pain. He looks up at her in surprise, hands clutched over his crotch. Leaning down, she kisses him as hard as she can, rubbing off the sedative on her lips. She smears some on his cheek to make it look as hurried and as messy as she can.

The remaining waxy barrier on her lips limits how much she can safely kiss him without also putting herself under a spell. Peggy is eager for a time only months from now when she can kiss him with all the abandon she pleases. 

James tries to stand, but seems to have forgotten the basic principle of gravity. The poison on his lips acts fast and he’s down on his knees within seconds. 

Peggy shushes him as he trips over his tongue. “Shh, for now. We'll talk soon, lovey.” 

“Pet names, now?” James slurs and his words crash together, “We defint’ly talkin’ ‘boutha’ later.” He lands on the dirt with a hollow thud, unconscious. 

“I look forward to it, Director. Sweet dreams.” Peggy spies a large boulder with jagged edges some distance away. It’s high time that she finds a way to cut through these damned zip ties. 

_____________

Peggy is miles away when James wakes up in the forest at sunset. She doesn’t get to see his reaction to the new background on his phone before he calls his final report on this case into SHIELD.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first creative work that I've finished in close to ten years. I have loose plans to add on some chapters or companion fics that will fill out a lot of the mystery and scenes mentioned through out. There's a lot of background for this fic bouncing around in my noggin. If you're into reading that kind of thing would you kindly comment or subscribe? Thanks for reading!


End file.
